Summer is now in full swing. With pools being open and watermelon being snacked on, the farthest thing from anyone's mind is school. That isn't stopping universities and institutions from releasing the honor roll from the spring semester, The Dean's List. Since the end of school, I have been checking each night to see if I had been added to this honored list. The moment had come when it was finally posted, but after digging through the list to find my name, my name was absent from the list. I searched everywhere until, to my disappointment, I had not made The Dean's List.
I was really upset. Probably more upset than I should have been. This semester, I had taken on more classes, which in time brought more stress. As the semester went by, I continued to study for hours at a time and work my hardest to get the best grades. At the moment, while my eyes were glued to the computer screen, that hard work resulted in not being enough.
I shut my laptop in despair while the words inside my head began to eat at me. I was thinking about how close I was to get a 4.0 GPA in my first year of college. Now, that dream was gone. With being so close to getting to be a part of this honorable list, I began to think what I could have done differently. From getting one more quiz question correct or studying harder for the test.
In high school, I was an honors student. Seven of my eight semesters were on the honor roll and finishing with a GPA I was proud to talk about. After graduating high school, I wanted to improve my study habits even more for college. I made some mistakes in high school that I did not want to repeat in college. Since then, I worked as hard as I could. Now, with a GPA less than I wanted it to be, I was faced with whether I really reached my goal.
But looking back on my first year, I would say that I did reach my goal. After all, I did improve my study habits. I also made sure I prevented myself from making the same mistakes as I did in high school. Overall, I did my absolute best. My parents have always told me that as long as you give it your all, they will always be proud of me. Instead of being so hard on myself, I should be proud of how well I have done my first year of college.
Although my GPA this semester was not what I had planned for myself, my grades do not define who I am. I know with all the hard work that I have put into that I don't need a list or a certificate of achievement to tell me that I am smart enough. I am definitely not ready for class to start yet. However, I am more than prepared to work even harder during my second year of college.
